Sunday, January 14, 2007

Holy Baby Planning, Batman!

Team Baby had one of those state of the partnership talks last night.

I have been compulsively worrying, as is my way, about not only the idea of bringing a baby into the world (What if there's a war and nuclear winter and famine? what if Jeb Bush is our next president? What if even JossWhedon is incapable of creating a decent Wonder Woman and it flops like a fish, thereby dooming us to poor film versions of comic books as studios refuse to fund them properly?) and myself as a parent (What if I puke when I change diapers? What if I am incapable of expressing love? What if I fall into that dark, looming pit of fucking despair that is postpartum depression? What if I can't stop saying fuck all the time and my kid gets in trouble for repeating it and I get called into a conference and act like Paula Smalls on Home Movies and can't stop my manic dialogue and explosive cursing?) and the inevitably high risk pregnancy (What if I have to be on bed rest? What if I go into premature labor? What if I lose the baby? What if I lose multiple babies?)....

(deep breath)

But I have also been worrying about how we are even going to talk about this as a couple. What if L is all quiet and non-expressive, as he can sometimes get when he is overwhelmed by my splooge of verbal emotions? What if he and I put it off for too long, as we commonly do (see for instance the fact that it took us three months just to get walls back up in the hallway and even those aren't completely finished five months in)? What if we immediately start disagreeing (co-sleeping, I'm looking right at you! You know you're going to be a problem!)? What if he pussyfoots around actually making a plan, so I pussyfoot around making a plan because when it comes down to it, he's the one who really wants babies and I still have to work out some ambivalence and am clearly not in a place to deal well with pussyfooting, at least not anyone else's pussyfooting....

Last night I very hesitantly mentioned that we should start to think about a time to schedule a talk about maybe making a plan regarding that whole kid thing.

L thought about it for a moment, then rattled off, "Well, the doctor wants you to have an actual baby within two years right? But we saw him last month, so that's twenty-three months? No later than that? So minus nine for making the kid, minus about 5 for getting off birth control and trying to get pregnant, minus another six in case Something Happens.... let's start trying to get you pregnant in three months. Is that okay?"

And I know that he is blissfully naive, that conception could take longer, could take forever, that six months could well be nowhere near enough time to recover from Something Happening, that there are ten million things that could wrong with this plan....

But... I think there's a Plan. And that is something. And I think that this is the first time that I have really known, deep down, that I can let go, that he can take some of the burden, that I don't have to worry myself to sleep every night, because he will share the load with me.